Hoda Taheri and Boris Hadžija’s Feature Debut ‘I Plant My Hand in the Garden’ Premieres in Venice Days With Exclusive Trailer

A new film about identity and family structures is set to premiere in the Venice Days slate as Hoda Taheri and Boris Hadžija’s feature debut, “I Plant My Hand in the Garden,” released an exclusive trailer ahead of its appearance in the festival competition. The Hollywood Reporter reported on Aug. 24 that the movie’s framing deliberately complicates what viewers consider real and what they recognize as constructed, using the relationship between autobiographical impulse and fictional storytelling as part of the work’s method.

The trailer and film concept center on a question posed in the reporting: how institutions, including marriage, nationality and gender, assign roles that can feel simultaneously authentic and manufactured. By blending autobiographical elements with fiction, the creators seek to show how personal narratives can be shaped by formal categories and by expectations that carry institutional authority, rather than emerging purely from individual choice.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film examines the intersection of identity and family through that boundary-blurring approach. The Venice Days selection places the debut in a festival environment that often spotlights emerging filmmakers, with the competition offering a public stage for new work before wider release.

The reported creative premise places special attention on the way formal systems define people’s positions within families. Rather than treating marriage, nationality and gender as neutral descriptors, the film’s stated interest is in the roles those institutions confer, and in how those roles affect what is experienced as personal truth.

The Venice Days competition timing means the trailer’s release functions as an early presentation of the film’s tonal and thematic commitments. For audiences and industry buyers, the first-look materials are also a practical step in establishing how the project may be positioned for future screenings, distribution conversations, and press coverage during the festival window.

While the trailer is the main newly released artifact at this stage, the reporting indicates that the creators are also using the film’s structure to test narrative conventions. By exploring autobiography and fiction as overlapping modes, “I Plant My Hand in the Garden” is designed to prompt questions about authorship, memory, and the extent to which identity is narrated by institutions as much as by individuals.

For the film’s creators, the Venice Days premiere provides visibility for a debut feature and a formal festival context for the project’s inquiry. For festival audiences, the combination of an exclusive trailer and a competition slot indicates that the work will be part of the festival’s curated conversation, not just an ancillary screening.

The next public steps, based on typical festival workflows, will come as the film moves from trailer circulation into festival screenings, accompanying press materials, and potential follow-on distribution discussions tied to festival exposure. No additional release date or casting details were included in the report published with the trailer announcement, so those particulars may be confirmed only in subsequent festival coverage.